50. The Diverse Mineral Deposits and Geology of Namibia

Hi everyone and welcome to Discovery to Recovery where we bring you geo-science stories from the world of ordiposit. This podcast is brought to you by the Society of Economic Geologists and is sponsored by Anglo-American. Anglo-American is a leading mining company with a portfolio that spans copper, nickel, platinum group metals, diamonds, iron ore, and steel making coal with crop nutrients and development. For its purpose of reimagining mining to improve people's lives, it provides many of the future enabling metals and minerals for a greener, greener, more sustainable world, and then meet the fast growing everyday demands of billions of consumers. Their sponsorship supports the podcast and the SEG. I am Halle Kebel, Senior Project Geologist at Anglo-American, and I'm your host for this week's episode. Last week, you delved into the world of lithium deposits with host Anne Thompson. This week, we'll be interviewing a few geologists who live and work in Namibia, where the SEG 2024 conference will be held in September. But first, we'll start up with a conference teaser from conference co-chair, Anna Guno. Anna is a deputy director at the Geological Survey of Namibia, GSN, Ministry of Mines and Energy. She obtained her master of science in geology and mineralogy from the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 1998. For more than two decades, Anna has been working as a geologist in various positions at GSN, including but not limited to people and financial management, establishing and managing a geoscience data management and standardization program, and building and leading multidisciplinary teams to coordinate geological mapping and research. She has also promoted geoscience awareness in schools and the public at large, and has ensured high quality provision of scientific, technical and policy support in the development of the institution. She is currently the Vice President for Southern Africa within the Geological Society of Africa, and serves as a committee member for the Geoscience Council of Namibia, as well as many other working groups, too many to name, in fact. She also has many professional affiliations, including the Geoscience Information Consortium and the Organization of African Geological Surveys, and is a member of the Faculty of Science Advisory Board at the University of Namibia. She is the conference co-chair of SCG 2024, along with Lawrence Robb. Welcome to the episode, Anna. Okay, thanks very much, I'm happy to be here. I understand you're the Deputy Director and Head of the Regional Geoscience Division within the Geological Survey of Namibia, is that right? Yeah. The people that are responsible for the regional geological mapping for Namibia, but we do that with the collaboration with the exploration and mining company and also the academic world. So you've got a good mix of regional geoscience and economic geology? Yeah, so what we're trying to do is create geological base map for the other geology disciplines. If you want one million geology map of Namibia, you get it. And it's actually free, one can download it. And then we have one to two 50,000 scale, which we say it's about 65% coverage of the country. But what we are busy now is actually trying to map the country at one to 50,000. Oh, wow. Yeah, it gave a different sector, an option of really making use of the data apart from the economic geology. We are also saying that the groundwater people can then make use of the new geological maps that we are trying to introduce. And we're also saying for urban planning and the farmers. Nice. So as many of our listeners may know that SEG conference this year will be held in Winterk, Namibia. And so as the conference co-chair, can you tell us a bit about what we can expect at SEG 2024? Okay. I mean, it will be hosted in Winterk, Winterk is the capital city of Namibia. And what you can expect from the conference will have a technical presentation, which is coral. And then we also then have poster presentations. And we also then expect keynote speakers that will be invited and planarist speakers from the industry. And we also hope that this time we'll have more women as a keynote speaker or planarist speakers. And also expecting that we also have a number of African participants who then can take part in the technical and poster session. We're also going to have field trips in Namibia, as well as some of the neighboring country, like we're looking into going to take some field trip in Zambia and Zimbabwe. So specifically, if we look in Namibia, we've got so much to offer when it comes to geology wise. And some of the field trip in Namibia, we will look into the uranium and lithium exploration and mining that is happening in Namibia. And there is also a chance way we are going to look at the carbonary types, deposit and rare earth metals in Namibia and some mines that are close to Winterk, where one can just go for a one day trip, like looking at copper deposit that are around here. So and for example, in Zambia, you have head of the copper belt. So some people will want to go and have a look at that for, yeah. So we do have an exciting field trip that we are going to put together, then apart from the field trips, we also invite companies, individuals out there to come and do the exhibitions because we would like to have diverse exhibits that can come and showcase their services. And apart from that, we will also then have a couple of short courses and workshops and we will also be making use of the Geological Savior of Namibia facility because we do have a course yet. And some of the people will be interested in looking at the archival course yet so that the Geological Savior of Namibia has been hosting. Yeah, I've been to that course yet. There's a lot in there. Yeah, and one thing that I haven't spoke about is the SIG-24 that our title is Sustainable Exploration and Development. So basically as the SIG-24 would like to look into the need for the meta, for the future and looking to the challenges that are associated with the logistic and exploration and development of the new resources that will be required in the future because we are all saying who would like to have electrical cars and need a lot of new mind. Oh, we need critical metals. Yeah, but then having that as a title, we then have a couple of technical themes and I'm just going to mention some of them. We are looking at the energy transition which is metal or the future and then we have specialty metals and material and we are looking at the innovative technology development in mineral deposits and science. We are also going through look at Africa, iconic or deposit. The other topic, the themes will be new discovery and development and then we have resources development and ESG from exploration through remedy and also looking at the gold for where you're looking at the responsibility, discovery and development and then we look at the vital high volume of base metal. So it's going to be quite an interesting conference and we encouraging the researchers out there, both in academic and industry to come and present their new results and maybe we can also lead to collaborations almost. Yeah, so that's great that you're focusing on diversity and also this year I'm glad there's a renewed focus on diversity, especially in the conference planning and the key notes speaker planning as well and when can we expect the registration to open? Hopefully next month we are busy finalizing all the nitty-gritty so that at the end of the day we try to open up the registration and submission of the abstracts by next year. I helped organize the SEG 100 conference and everything takes way longer than you expect. Yeah, it sounds like there's some great field trips being planned. I really hope to go to the conference but I just had a baby so I don't know if I can make it to the baby, but I would love to. I mean, please see if you can make it because I'm sure it will really be something to look forward to and then having all this expert in one roof in the end of what is in the window can things like that. It's amazing and the Eric Carrera and the young scientists also in the baby are also looking forward to meet these experts and scientists that they have read through their papers and books. Yeah. Thank you very much Anna. I just have one more question for you. What are you personally most excited about with respect to having the conference in winter? Is it all the experts in one place? Is it the field trips or something else? Yeah, for me, what I'm excited to have the conference in the window is to learn and see what is out there. What have the new discovery in economic geology? Is it the future for the research? Is it in the technology? Is it in the application? Or maybe it's both a combination of tradition and a new way of doing things because when you got a group of experts together you hear so much what is happening and then it's exciting. Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be an amazing conference. I hope so that you really make it with a while for people to come to Namibia and come and see the opposite and the country at large. It's a special window. It's a brilliant city by this. There's so much to see in the window in Namibia. Yeah, it's a beautiful view. I hope to see you there and thanks for the conference teaser. Okay, you're welcome and we're looking forward to see everybody out today. So please come to Namibia, come to Winterkin, come to SAG 2024. Now we will hear from Roy Miller who will tell us all about the regional geology of Namibia and how it relates to the diverse order-podsets of the country. Roy Miller has had 59 years experience as a research geologist in Namibia. He has been a consulting geologist since 1998 and was the director of the Geological Survey for 12 years. He was also technical manager of the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia for six years. He was the lead author on the one to one million geological map of Namibia in 1980 and an author for three volumes of the geology of Namibia in 2008. He has published 101 geological publications and over 60 conference abstracts. He has also worked on four large groundwater projects and contributed to the bird tree and butterfly outlaces of Namibia. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of South Africa, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Society of Economic Geologists. He received the Hennormarten Medal of the Geological Society of Namibia and the Draper Medal of the Geological Society of South Africa for contributions to the understanding of Namibian and South African geology. His interests are the evolution of rocks and mineral deposits, groundwater, wildlife, farming and the preservation of ecosystem. I met Roy in 2015 when he was the leader of a trip that I helped organize as SCG student chapter president at the Colorado School of Mines and it was an absolutely epic field trip. So when I started to think about this podcast episode, I thought who better to introduce the geology of the country than Roy Miller. Hi Roy, great to have you on the podcast today. Hi. Would you mind taking us on a bit of a nutshell journey of the tectonic history of Namibia from the Arquian or Pilioprozoic to the recent Calahari sand deposits that cover half the country? Okay. The oldest rocks are Pilioprozoic. We don't have Arquian and nice is metacidamins and granites. Now, down in the south of the country, we've got a two billion year island ox succession with undersides and, of course, the associated intrusives of decobros and diorites and so on. The youngest intrusive is a porphyry at 1.7 billion years but it has a 1.4 billion tonne porphyry copper molly deposit that has been drilled quite often but it just doesn't quite have the super gene enrichment zone to make it go. The grade is about 1.4 percent copper. Is that hype? That's the hype, sorry, should have given me the name, the hype, that's correct. Is that the oldest porphyry in the world? It looks like it, I don't know too much about porphyry, but certainly it's very old, 1.7 billion. Wow. Okay. Then we get onto Mesoprozoic, well, we've got three of them. Down in the south, nice is granulites, metacidamins, of various amalgamated terrains that form the lemak one metamorphic complex, 1.2 billion years in age and that is exactly the equivalent of the Canadian dremel problems and in continental risk constructions that put the two next to each other. We don't have a lot of mineralization there, but they're big pigmatine swarms and some of those pigmatines have a rare metal mineralization. Okay, the second belt, right up against the lemakor belt, that's the Sinclair Supergroup and right, it's unmetamorphosed, you could in some of the ignim rights you can still seek loss for, 1.4 billion years in age. It's incredible. Right next to the lemakor belt, let's calculate, enderzites, trekky enderzites, with even shushenite, porphyridide swarms, there's no mineralization there in that stuff, but it's a typical volcanic arch succession. And in the end of the country, we have the real bot volcanic arch or what we also call the calahari cup of duck, the same age stuff and volcanic sediments. The youngest sediments are 1.2 billion years, and they end with 1 billion year rebits. Now the 1.2 billion year sediments are lactestine turbidates and the silks toned bases of those turbidates host copper mineralization. That's been weekly metamorphosed and deformed by the number of ducks. In the mineralization, although the sediments are 1.2 billion years in age, the mineralization is 550 million, it is dumber in age, which is very unusual. Okay, that goes into Botswana. It's obviously being looked at for rich copper, large-scale exploration. And then up north, as I've said, with the meas of Broderozoid belt, I've gotten some light to granulite-grade nicest, epiphyrametomorphic complex, but inclusive into that part of the whole episode is the Koneni or Angola and all of the sides. It's a huge of the size. 350 kilometers long, mainly in Angola, 1.37 billion years in age. Not very exciting from mineralization, but there is a little marginal nickel mineralization, small amount in the meas. Then nothing that's been mined, just a little bit. No, no, no, it's been drilled, but it's only small scale. Okay. There might be more in Angola. Angola is difficult, it may be more in Angola. There's not a lot of exploration going on there, but Angola could be excited geologically. Okay, the next week, the thing we come to is our main succession, the Dhamra Supergroup. And that covers most of the country. And that evolved in the Dhamra origin through typical woods and cycles, through phases of rifting, spreading, continental break-up, drift, ocean-floor formation, and finally Koneni collision. And we find the Dhamra succession, or Dhamra age succession, in three belts, the Dhamra belts through the centre of the country, the Calcutta belt up in the northwest along the coast, and then the Gary belt in the south. Now, rift phase, we have some Kubona touch, and they've been looked at for a little bit at the moment. We also seem to have had a neo-progressor, or the deposits in the rift, or spreading phase. And that's obviously being metamorphosed and it now forms the Okanjande Drafat deposit that is being looked at again for its coarse-grined flaked graphite, good quality stuff. Okay, in the north, we have platform carbonates, and these are identical in age, and they've exactly the same snowball earth marker units as the central African cup of that. It's a low-grade straight form of copper, lead zinc mineralization, which appears to be post-ectonic in age. Are the snowball earth markers those diamictites that have formed the basis for the diamictites, but the better markers are the cap carbonates to those. Right. The Astridland has a gray cap carbonate, and Marinoa, a ten-coloured cap carbonate, which in the DRC dip in the Congo is called the Dolomé Holes, pinkish and colour, but it's the same colour worldwide that cap carbonate. Okay. Full hoppern in the students have done a hang of work with cognized structure and that stuff. Do you think there was a snowball earth or more of a slush ball earth? Of course not, man. I feel you had snowball earth, but it is a problem and it's certainly being debated, in other words, with frozen oceans at the equator. Remember, the idea of the snowball earth was the Einstein's associated with the diamictites, where the magnetic poles were horizontal. At the poles, they dipped steeply into the earth, whereas at the equator they parallel to the earth's surface, and that's what got the idea going. These Einstein's interpreted with the facial diamictites, in other words, oceans frozen at the equator. Okay. All right, we have spreading face, said extra-posites, not very big in the Dhammerai anyway. Tungwari, ledsing, barat, in the North, in the counterpart. Namib ledsing in the Dhammer belt, but down south from the garric belt to the huge multilayered ledsing system of the Rosquina mine. Its western limit was a huge concert, with super-gene alteration down to depth of 800 meters, and that is the host to the zinc deposit of scorpion. It's the same age, it's the same exhalative mineralization, but altered during the protegeous halogen to just pure zinc oxide. Okay, exhalative activity, a mid-ocean rich in the central Dhammerai belt, the mid-ocean straw, the mattress belt, with typical cube rears, all right, vehement extra-posites, and minded at the ojahazi and mattress mine. Then in the south, the southern foreland basin, dynamical, with its world-famous end-provisate ideotron fossils, the first multi-cell animals in the geological record. When we get to mineralization in the Dhammer belt, most of Namibia's mineralization is Dhammer in the age, and a lot of it is post-collision, and over as post-fulfent, 450 million, and a lot of it produced by muser thermal fluids, and we're going to look at some of those deposits. The Lascidic Pregnant Act 1's 5, of 5 million years in age, has the low-grade uranium mineralization of russians and russet mines, has huge deposits there in the center of the Dhammerai. The platform carbonates host almost 600 mineral deposits and mineral shone. It's an elephant country up there, but it's difficult. And of course, we have the mesothermal pipes. There are 5, 30 million year polymetallic cement type pipes, and the lead zinc type deposits and parts of carbonab and biogalkas. And of course, with potatious and supergene weathering, those deposits have supergene alteration, and we have complex copper, lead zinc, fanating, or monos. Okay, and we have a thick perogenic belt with lots of metamorphosis and turbid ash, and we have a perogenic belt. The deposits are low-grade, 1 to 2 ppm, but they mine presently at no worship, and what you've got here, which you visited on your trip. Yeah, we visited both russ. And there's another mine on the way called Twin Hills, and they said, well, the deposit being drilled at the moment, not very sure they're going to find more. Lots of pegmatarts in the centre of the belt, and of course, they being looked at for lithium. And then the low-grade, more than part of the belt, tin-tent-lunch pegmatarts at always huge pegmatarts. They've been mined, they're low-grade. The tin grade is 0.23%, but it pays to mine them, and they've been mined again for tin-tent-lunch. In the early days, the company missed the petalites in those pegmatarts, so they have now found the petalite there, and they're setting up a petalite recovery plant at the moment. That's a beautiful mineral. I still have samples in my living room from petalite taken on that trip in 2015. Yeah, that would have been, I think, from the Rubicon pegmatite. Exactly, yeah. The pink petalite there. But this is plain white petalite that looks just like tagline spawn. It's really difficult to distinguish. Then we also have stockworks of quartz, plain tin tungsten, and those are being looked at, I would say. And of course, they're mentioned stone. They're quite a few marble and granite quarries, and then now we come to younger carboniferous to Jurassic, the Peru Supergroup. Economically, not exciting, but what is incredibly important in this country, there are sandstone aquifers in the Peru, and we're semi-design country. We're a huge farming communities, and they depend entirely on underground water. So sandstone aquifers, some of them have top quality drinking water. That's the only water they have for their survival. And that's one of the few things that I'm still pursuing in this country. Okay, we get now to Pradesh's continental breaker, the Tristan Blue. The initiated the eruption of the Etnika basalts in Namibia, and Paraná basalts in Brazil. But the Blue also initiated intra-continental supervolcano, and we have it integrated with the basalts massive, absolutely gigantic real ignebrite flow, and those integrated with the basalts are the biggest real ignebrite in the global geological record. And we see those in North-West Namibia. The critatious throughout Africa was very human, and there was tremendous erosion, pineyplanation, development of what is called the African erosion surface. And the African erosion surface at that time had 50-metre thick and more red clay-rich reglets. And of course, whether human climate like that, you also had large-scale run-ups. So the African erosion surface was cut by big river systems, and one of them was the pale orange river that produced a huge offshore delta with shelf and deep-water turbanaut deposits. That's in these turbanaut deposits that billion barrel oil accumulations have been found under three kilometers of water. And that's incredible that one can drill and produce from water depths like that. Didn't the orange river also bring diamonds down to the coast from England? You're getting a head of me. All right, okay, critatious, very human. Lots of drainage, lots of offshore deposition, and of course, passive margin successions as the Atlantic was developing. But in about 70 million years, offshore successions tell us that sedimentation offshore suddenly dropped very dramatic. And that's when large-scale run-off ceased. Africa became arid to semi-arid, or central in southern Africa. Through its own and aeolian sedimentation began to fill up the calahari of central and southern Africa. In wet appearance, the orange river floods periodically transported diamonds from the inland kimberlites to the coast, strong, suddenly storms and long-shore drift transported the diamonds a long way north, but almost up to the whole of the Namamean coast. Diamond, the first beach travels in the Namek Desert and offshore are all gem-quality diamonds. Any boat and four-quality stuff that reaches the coast during the storm, sometimes the boulders and pebbles in the beach gravels just hammered them and only the gem-quality diamonds survived. So 90% of the hard diamonds are gem-quality. Incredible. Okay, getting a bit younger. Only you see in sea level four. During that sea level four, there were 19 meter v-shaped valleys cut into the big rock of the Namame Bevel. That was subsequently filled with river gravels and cemented by calahari. And that calahari now hosts several calahari tyrannium deposits in the Namamean. There's been a lot of drilling. Okay, getting younger still from about 21 million years ago. The sand blown inland from the beaches onto the Namame Desert began to accumulate in dune fields all along the Namame coast in the hyperarid environment of the Namame Desert. And that continues today. And of course, the dunes today are major tourist attractions. At the coast you have regular seamists, but despite that, the lack of rain and the hyperarid environment supports a vibrant salt industry at the coast. The salt is forming today in the salt pans and that takes us to the individuality from the Paleoperozoic to the present. Thanks, Roy. That's super informative. It seems economically speaking that the Neoproterozoic is the most important age for mineralization in the Mibioji view with that. Absolutely. I mean, it's got all these sedicces deposits. And then of course, the matchless belt, those cubrius pie active deposits, they're not very high grade, but mesothermal deposits, the gold and the polymetallic cement type and the lead zinc up there in the North. And of course, the roschpina, that is huge. And that recently found more mineralization there, which they haven't opened up yet. But it was a huge sedic system. At the time, during spreading, but the full breakup. And the thermal gold is attracting a lot of attention despite its low grade. On our field trip, we covered sort of the northern part of the country. Do you think we missed out on not seeing the southern half of the Mibio or is most of the mineralization in the North? In the South, you have high, it changes hands now and again. It's not always easy to get to. Crossing and scorpion, one could go to those. All right, scorpion's very interesting because it's instead of a red glossant, you've got a white glossant, all the hysteria sites and the white zinc mitose and so on. The carbon dioxide. Of course, it's all fides, not everybody recognized, recognized the white glossant as a roschant. And of course, they're getting down on show in the diamond area. They then give deposits. Some of the diamonds, they're on show diamonds. They're very interesting. The diamonds are heavy, so they all, in all the fractures and the cracks and at the bottom of the big rock levels. And so the gravels are the all, but they're not a lot of beach sand or aionian sand. They can see the gravels in their thinking surveys and they mind them without being able to really sample them properly, but the greatest good enough, it's proving economic, which is actually very interesting. No, that's super interesting. Can I just be on the breakers on it? It's difficult to sample. For sure. And boy, you get storms down in the South, they're huge. Yeah, we saw a lot of shipwrecks on the coast. Absolutely. Well, I've done a lot of work in the skeleton guys park and it's called skeleton guys park because the shipwrecks put a lot of the whale skeletons as well from the other days waiting on the coast. Well, it's a fascinating country geologically and culturally, so I certainly hope to get back there for SEG this year. Well, I'm insisting on being retired. Yeah, you've been saying that for a while now. Yeah, it's about time I got there. So I won't be going to SEG, but I hear there are lots of extrusions. Yeah, and it's really worthwhile having that to see as much. Well, thank you so much Roy for popping out of retirement to do that part of the podcast episode. I'm sure the listeners will get a lot of value from it. Okay, it's good to see you again. Next, we will delve more into the mineral deposits of Namibia and the work of an exploration geologist with guest Mary Barton. Mary is principal consultant at Odiqua Geo Services with expertise in diverse commodities, including uranium, diamonds, and copper. Her professional background encompasses exploration, target generation, geological modeling, and mineral property due diligence. Mary earned her BSC degree in geology and computer science from the University of Namibia, a BSC honors degree from the University of Cape Town, an MSC degree in geology from Curtain University in Australia, and an MSC and International Mineral Resources Management from the University of Dundee in the UK. On the professional front, Mary is a registered member of both the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions and the Geological Society of South Africa. Additionally, she serves as the Africa Regional Vice President for the International Association on the Origin of Autoposites. Thank you for joining us today, Mary, and welcome to the episode. It's a pleasure to be here, Heli. I thought we'd start off just with what got you interested in geology in the first place, and what your path was to becoming an exploration geologist. I must be honest, I didn't start off, like I didn't go to uni to study geology. My passion had always been computer science, so I think from like when I entered high school, I just thought, oh, I'm going to be a computer scientist, I love computers so much, and that was my thing. But when I went to university, then we were told that, no, you actually need two majors, and a friend of mine actually asked me, there's an introductory class to geology. Maybe you can come and sit in with me and you can listen, and oh, when I just had that lecture, I talked about rocks and how they formed and mounted, and I thought, I want to know more. And four years later, I graduated geology computer science, and I think everybody was shocked when I went on to study theater geology and not computer science. It just fascinated me from them, but I kind of fell into it, yeah. Interesting. I was the same way I studied biology first, and then got into geology afterwards. Yeah, but entering into the exploration geology scene, I was lucky enough when I just graduated with my undergraduate, where I got a job straight on an actual fact, it was like three days after I finished the last exams, and the company came and said, we need 18 or something students to come and work, and we all moved to site. And it was, it was not as shocking to the system as I thought it would be. I think we had a lot of field trips that prepared us for it, but it was just living in that environment where you're suddenly in the campsite in the middle of nowhere, you wake up, you go to work, and you come back, and you sleep, and you recycle every day. But I really enjoyed it. You had time to be immersed into the rock. You really had time to understand the geology. After hours, you could go for a walk, and you know, have discussions around the table with no distractions. So I think that's really when I thought I'd like exploration. I like finding new things. I like discovering, you know, what's behind that next hill. It was out of uranium company? That was uranium company, yeah. That was central, the central of the country. So that's the Eronga region, and that's known as the, like the Renew region where all the Renew mines are currently at. So we started actually like on the ground truth in itself. So we were given like centimeters and a notebook and partner up and off we go, and I really, I think this is so much fun. I felt like Indiana Jones, and I think that's the exciting thing about exploration. It's always something new. It's not, you know, a repetitive process, and that's really what I like about exploration being an exploration geologist and an economy geologist. So that's something new on the horizon. Yeah. Greenfield exploration is particularly fun. I find particularly exciting. So what did a typical day look like for you in that job? I guess yeah, in your first job, like who accompanied you in the field? You traveled by car, do you have to use helicopter? Are there certain times of day or year where you couldn't work in the country because of, you know, weather or something like that? I mean, the thing I love about working in the amoebia is basically that you can work all year round. So we don't really have like an off-season or an off-season. It's all year round. We work. The weather changes. Of course, summertime it's very hot, and then also sometimes very wet. So you would use a road that you would use the rest of the year, and suddenly it's not there the next day. But basically all year round is field season. I know that at the site we would always be paired up with someone because it gets very, very hot, and it just gets so hot. There's no tree inside. So no way to really find shelter. So you would wake up, find your partner for the day. You would have the traverses set out. And I think we used to target like 20 kilometers a day of walking. Oh wow. In the heat. Yeah. And you would all be loaded up in that. And I pick up truck and you would be dropped off wherever you're starting and you start your walk for the day. It's 20k. How did you mitigate the heat risk then if there's no trees? Because while I'm used to working, it's the opposite. We usually have risk of cold. Yeah. It's what it's sunscreen. It's taking regular breaks. The northern part of the amoebia is a little bit humid. So it's hot and humid. But the central amoebia is dry and hot. So it's not as bad. But then you are more likely to get dehydrated because you don't think you're sweating as much. So we always had the regular breaks have enough water and always keep it to your partner because it's so easy to get this oriented. Yeah. No, that's smart. I know. I've read stories of people actually dying from heat stroke in the field. So I guess it's a real risk when it gets that hot that you have to be super careful. Yeah. No, I know it is. What are some other above ground risks working in Namibia? Like are there wildlife risks or other other weather risks? I mean, they definitely are wildlife risks, depending on where you are. I remember I came side type snakes. So you couldn't leave your issues outside your room because they would crawl in there and try to find heat, especially in winter. I remember working in the in the nowclift and there were scorpions everywhere on the tent. And certainly now with where there has been a lot of interest in terms of cobalt and copper and PGMs. Those are in northwest Namibia and that's kind of wild country. Very lush, very dense with vegetation and that's also elephant country. So you you you you'd run the risk of running into elephants and in the bigger, you know, wildlife. So there's always that risk as well. And then this certainly we have a lot of unexplored or unexplored areas. So areas where you go in just with your GPS, there's not track, there's no road and we walk a long distance. So getting lost is really really a huge risk. Two years ago, I joined the the Ministry of Finance and Energy, the Geological Survey, they were mapping in the south here and I joined them and I paired up with another lady and we we went mapping and we underestimated how far our points are because we do original mapping. And by the time we saw we on the last point, the sun is just about to set. I don't know boy did we have to rush back and we were lucky because we got to the car just as the sun we could just clearly see where the the car was. Unfortunately, the other team did not make it and we had to drive around putting flashing lights on the cars just to show that they can find us. It's just underestimating also how how fast it can get dark, especially in winter. So that's also a risk just being in this under explored area. You're the only person around. That's a common risk I guess anywhere is getting lost as a geologist and making sure you have enough daylight. Although there's some parts of the world where you have 24 hour daylight. When I was working up in the Yukon, that was great because it was July and I was mapping and it basically didn't get dark. I have a random question about elephants. Are elephants aggressive? What's the elephant risk in particular? Will they will they trample you? Is it just because they're so big? This is just that they're so big. They don't like noise. They don't like abrupt noises. I mean, they could just walk by. But if you're walking and you kind of startled them, they don't like to be startled. And when they are with the babies, they're a little bit more sensitive then, you don't want to get very close to them. Okay. What would you say the most dangerous large animal is in Namibia? Is it the lions and the cheetahs? When I was in her final year, one of the projects that I did was doing geochemical sampling. And it's in the National Park and in the game reserves, they would have like hunting season. And we went to one of the game farms and they said, no, you can come in and sample, get your samples. But just remember that we and hunting seasons or some of the animals have a bit aggressive. I was like, no, oh man. And that's when your hunting season is over in our county, not when you've just made the angry. So you've got the lions as well. And you just need to be aware of where you're going to. I mean, most of the other areas, like in the south, you don't run the risk of running into a lion or a cheetah. But probably when you're going north, western Namibia, for example, run a bigger risk of running into those animals. Right. Yeah. Yeah. In Canada, I guess it's just bears usually. And then sometimes mousse can be aggressive as well. And and there's always a risk of mountain lions. But there's not very many of them. So it's mostly bears that people worry about. And that's it. We actually worry about monkeys as well. Really? Yeah, it's because I mean, I guess they smell the food or something and they can get very aggressive when they want that food. And even just on the outskirts, for example, of Winduk camping out of the or doing some workout that is lots of monkeys and they they tend to be aggressive when it comes to food. Oh man. Interesting. So even though they're small, they can get aggressive. Oh yeah. And then so I guess Namibia has a really wide range of mineral deposit styles and you've worked in a few of them. I know you've worked in the diamond industry. And I'm really interested in the diamond mining in Namibia in particular, because it's not bedrock mining from Kimberlites. It's on the coastline. Correct. That's super cool. So yeah, how I guess how the diamonds came to be along the coastline and how you actually mine them. Okay. So we have placed the deposits here on the coast of Namibia. And this place of deposits are actually coming from all the way in life from Kimberle. So from South Africa, they've traveled all this way. And they like mice in age, mice in age deposits. What we call the mega placer deposit along the coastline. So you can trace our diamonds starting from the source from the Kimberlites in Kimberle. And then they have been eroded and washed down along ancient river systems, which the orange device, one of them right now, at least saying is really, really, really small part of what the major drainage system used to be like. And this is the same system that created the fishery of Akenyan, which is one of the largest Kenyan in the world as well. And so the diamonds traveled through there. And occasionally at certain sites, they would be trap sites. Their diamonds are quite heavy. So they travel with their larger rocks. And then they'll be trapped if you lose any of that velocity. Certainly on the orange device, you have the orange device deposits, which are like the river deposits. They are basically on the meandering side of the river, where you have the loss of velocity, drop in energy and move the post to those. The river amount empties into the Atlantic Ocean, and we have a very, very strong wave current here, a coast parallel and coast perpendicular. And these causes some sort of winoing system that actually saves the diamonds through. And what you would notice is that as you enter into the Atlantic Ocean, the size of the diamond decreases, but the quality actually increases because you get the diamonds that have actually survived all the battering. So you get almost 90% gemstone quality diamonds. And these are found on ancient beaches. So you have buried beaches or onshore beaches. But the action of the waves are so strong that they wino out and they kind of see if this deposits perform very high grade concentrated diamond puppets. And this is actually what's been mined. And when the mine first started, it was all unsure. But now they're actually mining in the sea and they're using system called accretion. So they're actually creating land and then mining it as they've created almost a kilometers worth of beach, you know, from land to shore. And we're not talking about coast parallel. We're talking about coast perpendicular. So we have moved in a kilometer almost into the sea. And you can actually trace these deposits from the onshore stuff to the offshore stuff where the big vessels are. And they are almost at two kilometers offshore. So you have a whole huge system that distributes just massive diamonds. And you can trace these almost 10 kilometers along the coastline where you end up with a smaller type of deposits in the ludic area. And these basically formed as a combination of marine diamonds and a giant diamond. That's so interesting and so unique. It must be really cool to be a geologist there. But also to be a mining engineer and figure out how to how to mine the alluvial diamonds. That's so fascinating. If you look on Google Earth, can you see like where they're dredging or I mean, they don't dredge. They basically create total dryland new beach and then they they they in the mine that you might be able to see. They have huge dams right now because that mean mine being I mean 10 kilometers from orange and two ludrates, the whole coastline that's been mining for years. But I think we're talking about 102 years now. But you can tell where the mining dams are. You can see some of the mining ponds. So they would the might create ponds to for water ingress so that they can dewater some of the areas. And the fascinating thing when I suddenly when I started working in the dam might it's seeing these huge vacuum cleaners. Once I've exposed there the mineralized horizon, they just use vacuum cleaners to sweep it all up. People just vacuum the ground. It's just it's fascinating to see when you say vacuum cleaner like how big like a sedan maybe. Okay. Okay. Wow. You know, I worked with what we call the sea walker or the PDP that's probably grid platform. And it's this huge massive it's almost looking like an oil rig but it works and it works into the sea. You know, it looks like a Transformers movie when you see it walking very slow but it's like this huge machine just walking into the waves and the drill platform is on that and you would then be drilling like 500 meters into the water, trying to figure out whether you have damns out there or not. And then you have to go on a cable car to get onto the platform and do your things and engineers really. That's pretty cool. So I guess if you're if you're just a lay person you can't just go to the beach in that area. It's all probably blocked off and is it just claimed all along the coastline? Yes, it's mainly claimed by the BS. So I'm the namdev and then areas that are not claimed they are still the forbidden areas. This is all the area that has a potential to house diamonds. So nobody is allowed to go in there up until 20 from not mistaken 2017 to come into orange and when you needed a permit then security clearance and these paperwork to actually get into the town. So for 100 years this town has been closed and now suddenly it's opened up and is this transition going on from a mining town to a normal operating free town? So back to other deposit types. In the beginning of this episode Roy Miller went through the sort of geologic and tectonic history of the country and touched on all the deposits that are known in each age of rocks and in each rock type. But what do you think the next frontier is in Namibia? Like is there a specific deposit type that's maybe under explored for in the country? Or do you think there is a certain region of the country that may have undiscovered deposits that just hasn't been worked on very much? Certainly I mean Namibia is becoming the the goal to place right now for a whole range of pretty communal arts. Traditionally I think production has always been copper, lead sink, uranium secondly we've been producing uranium since the 1970s. Manganese we've got very well known Manganese fields but those are probably the traditional historical production. But right now I think Namibia has been prospected for almost all sorts of things. They say huge huge huge dry for the human exploration here and the fascinating thing is that I think it's always been known that it's stay types with that huge peptide fields but it's never been economic. So for example the teen mine which probably dates back to 1970s they've always just concentrated the teen and thrown out the lithium and I think with the lithium prices now going up they've started relooking at their process in flow and I think most recently they've started looking at how they can recover lithium from their peptide and historically we've been producing from the pitolite but now there's discovery of spodium in which it's much much better in terms of recovery for lithium and so there's been an interest in the central region of Namibia for lithium and I think that's just going to grow because there's just so much. I think there are at least three tenements right now just very highly prospects for lithium and finding good intersections in their drill programs and I think interestingly enough the circular economy comes into play when you talk about lithium in that region because one of the properties that has quite a good mineral resource basically is tailings so the people that own the historical tailings from the mine said quite a well-defined mineral resource in terms of lithium which historically actually has been used for brickmaking because it's also there's a clay horizon it's very fine ice and fine and it's well crushed there's been using it for pavements and bricks and things and suddenly it's like oh with lithium rich then down in the south there's an area called the tantalite valley and it's known for rich tantalum deposits but the same peptide that holds the tantalum because it's also potential for hosting lithium and so there's also been interest now in the south and area which is probably the most under explored area in Namibia right now. I think other deposits that would definitely come up I think cobalt a few companies have found good showings in north western Namibia and then I think the last but to settle know the list is rare earths I think Namibia is known for hosting a lot of carbon types and that there's at least three rare earth projects which are quite advanced in other areas as well. So the green energy transition is driving a lot of exploration in the country. Oh for sure for sure I mean even for kapa which historically we've always been known to produce you know how quality kapa at Sumip start was it's very good those deposits again have been evaluated for critical minerals like vanadium, germanium, gallium because they were known to host them but again we didn't need them we didn't bother about them and now this sudden shift to to see how economic it is to recover those. And the interesting thing I think about Namibia is that the eastern side of Namibia is basically under soil cover and it's colouring. Yeah it's colouring sand and Namib sand you know so it's looking at what else is what's actually under under cover day and I know there's some good copper projects that have looked at geophysics and linked up the damarability and the copper prospective areas with the Hansen belt in Botswana and the new very rich kapa deposits in Botswana and able to trace that along strike. So it's just needs to really change your thinking and how they would approach a hundred meters of soil cover. Yeah. So you still think there's a lot to be discovered. Oh for sure for sure. I mean when you look at in terms of intensity of mining and exploration in Namibia it's always traditionally historically focused on some central areas but I think there's now more interest in this opportunity to branch out in really really proper green fields area and just not brown fields. And I guess on on the green transition what opportunities do you think the green transition might bring to the country and is there anything that could hinder in country value addition? In terms of value addition I think it's only copper that we actually we could say we add some value to it. Everything else is basically raw material or at the very least at the starting stage of combination. I think there's certainly opportunities for value addition in country. What might hinder that is the size of what it was. So we'd need to have you know enough material to actually warrant building infrastructure for value addition you know some factories or what now we need to be having the volumes to sustain that. But we are seeing I think is an interest in mining companies and working together and seeing how they can bring about this infrastructure. So even if that it was that's a small so low tonnages that companies might actually be able to share infrastructure and I think this is good for the country so we don't have huge mining footprint in terms of infrastructure so we don't have like 10 plants both produce all 10 produce of the same thing but would have two or three central processing facilities for mining hubs for example. And I think in case an example with the rail ads that three advanced projects have actually formed an alliance where they're saying could we work together to see how we could produce a processing facility that can treat all of our ore then we don't all have to raise the capital and it's really that capital is well to raise it for each single project. So looking at can we raise capital for one infrastructure that can take all of our ore I think that's that's certainly an opportunity and I think mining itself tends to potentially gain in terms of harnessing green energy and and this is because maybe I again hours and hours of sunlight and very very strong wind regime on the coastal side and I think we have opportunities for green energy to power our mining. Okay. Yes and we do have that already coming up you see the mining company setting up wind farms and solar farms to see how they can provide their ore energy needs. That's amazing yeah because I guess Namibia is sort of a hub for green energy in that sense right the wind and the solar and hydrogen also so that would be great if mining company. Yes certainly yes there's huge plants for green hydrogen you don't have to get infrastructure in Namibia and on the downside the green hydrogen infrastructure would consume massive land so basically there was to realize some of our land for potential exploration opportunities and most of that is in under explored areas. On the good side is that most of this infrastructure I think there are at least two big green hydrogen plants and green hydrogen infrastructure plan. Most of these are also looking at infrastructure corridors and these infrastructure corridors would be very good for mining industry to tap into so you might find that way power water was far. It would be now closer because you have this huge infrastructure corridor that's been built so that's also a plus for us yeah. So there's a wealth of resources to tap into for various things. I just have one more very broad question to ask you I guess in your experience working in Namibia prepared to other countries you've lived in and I've lived in South Africa and Australia what do you think is the most unique thing about the mining industry in Namibia like is there anything in particular you're excited about and is there anything that you'd like to see change? The unique thing is that it's so under explored there's so much opportunities to learn so much the mining industry is also very small I know it's probably every time through the other mining industry is so small but it's so small and it's easy to make contacts we have the Geological Survey of Namibia with the Geological Society with the Geoscience Council. You've got the Chamber of Minds so you've got all these associations where people can really get together and share ideas and build a stronger industry and I like that about it. The negative side is that it's so far from each other I mean if I need to see people if they sit together and we look at I need to see people at the Geoscience Council of Namibia I'll have to travel 10 hours by cars so the distances are so wide that sometimes it is difficult to build those relations that might make our mining industry a bit stronger. On the downside I think we're still struggling with women representation certainly on the senior levels there are lots of women in the industry but you just don't see that representation really coming through at themanagement levels or ex-co levels even and I would like to see a little bit more of that. Just a common problem in many countries not just Namibia. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm sure listeners are going to be really interested in all this stuff you had to say about Namibia and whoever's coming to the conference is probably going to be more excited now and maybe some people who weren't planning on going to the conference will find out. Really it's going to be a great time. There's just so much to see. I think anybody who comes to Namibia for that conference is in a really really good time. Thank you for joining us on the Discovery to Recovery Podcast. I am Halle Kevil, one of the hosts of this podcast series. This concludes season four. Keep an eye out for some special episodes coming out later this year. In particular we will be sharing the top entries from the student chapter podcast challenge that wraps up at the end of March 2024. You can access past episodes of Discovery to Recovery on scgweb.org/podcast and most other places you get your podcasts. Be sure to follow the scg on LinkedIn and other social media channels to get notified when the next episode comes out. A huge thank you to Anna Guno, Roy Miller and Mary Barton, who generously gave us their time and insight for this podcast. This episode was produced by your host with support from our production team and Thompson, Rip Blue Mel, Corey Toshbichen, and Maxwell Porter. Our theme music is "Compliments by East Winds" from their album Confluence. You can check them out at eastwinds.bandcamp.com. Thank you for listening to the Discovery to Recovery Podcast.